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Indian music, for the most part is recorded and mixed by rank amateurs with absolutely no taste and no sense of balance. It has too much treble and the bass cuts abruptly at 60Hz, which means a properly balanced system sounds quite bad when playing it back. ......

Quote:

Originally Posted by sangram

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To adjust signal levels, download a white noise signal and adjust till the mid, high and low are playing at approximately the same level, it will be closer than your ear. Use pink noise to test whether you got the result correctly. White noise has equal power in each octave range, and pink tapers it at 6dB/octave, more representative of normal music (not Indian music, that's more like white noise with bass boost).

Keep levels very low when playing white noise.

Dear sir, your these two posts are a must read for any diy-audio enthusiast with Indian origin.
These clearly states the fact. Excellent comparison. I guess it's an observation of a life time.

Having built an audio spectrum analyser and having learnt how to obtain the TSP with LIMP and how to use those to build a suitable/optimized enclosure and test their performance with TrueRTA, your words are so very clear to me now.

That white noise reference was really helpful to tune my system to make Indian music sound better. What you mentioned is just the 100% truth. And I'm reporting this back to you after listening to several uncompressed tracks with many genres.

It's a rare privilege to learn this fact from you as I sincerely think.

And more, now I really feel what an experienced man you are, your knowledge and your passion about audio!

Hi Som, that first quote could easily apply to many UK recordings from the past, all high and mid range with almost no bass. Some of my old vinyl records sound so bad that I can't bring myself listen to them at all now. I did toy with the idea of tone controls but I don't see why I should compromise my good sounding material by playing it through a system which has been deliberately modified to make bad recordings sound 'nicer'.

I'm now thinking about setting up my old CD recorder with an eq device of some sort so that I can record some old vinyl records (which I cant find a re-master of) onto CD's. It might be worth giving it a go but i'll need a cheap tone control board between my turntable and my CD recorder. Another project which has a low priority for me

Hi Som, that first quote could easily apply to many UK recordings from the past, all high and mid range with almost no bass. Some of my old vinyl records sound so bad that I can't bring myself listen to them at all now. I did toy with the idea of tone controls but I don't see why I should compromise my good sounding material by playing it through a system which has been deliberately modified to make bad recordings sound 'nicer'.

I'm now thinking about setting up my old CD recorder with an eq device of some sort so that I can record some old vinyl records (which I cant find a re-master of) onto CD's. It might be worth giving it a go but i'll need a cheap tone control board between my turntable and my CD recorder. Another project which has a low priority for me

Slainte

Davy

Right Davy.
Perhaps earlier, the recording technology was a factor then. But as pointed out by Sangram, the wise man, most of the not-so-old or average Indian recordings are simply not good or I should say pure craps.
Though HMV, EMI etc. have done some excellent jobs, many not so famous mushrooms simply ruined many awesome tracks with the reasons better known to them.

But the main factor for sticking to them is nostalgia ( and mid-life crisis.....perhaps, ).

EQing is a must have thing to do. In fact with pc it is easier to make EQ presets. Any high end sound card with selectable presets will serve that purpose on the fly nicely as I believe.

I am too lazy to add my "special touch" to the oldies with a sound editor. Lots of work! So I follow the "On the fly" EQ preset way.

Cheers Som. I'm afraid I don't have much patience for messing around with PC's. I do use one as a digital source for playing FLAC music files through a USB DAC but if it's not plug and play I quickly loose interest.

I used to dislike the things immensely, that dates back to the mid 1980's and too many hours of my life wasted trying to work with gw basic.

Dear som sir,
I lived in Andhra pradesh, I don't know where I can get the pcb copper clads. Can you give some online dealer website address where you used to buy those pcb clads. their price for minimum quantity and sizes. please also share the easy way method to get nice looking pcbs. thank you in advance.

Dear som sir,
I lived in Andhra pradesh, I don't know where I can get the pcb copper clads. Can you give some online dealer website address where you used to buy those pcb clads. their price for minimum quantity and sizes. please also share the easy way method to get nice looking pcbs. thank you in advance.

I purchase it from a local dealer. I have no online purchase facility available yet.
Always buy a fibre-glass based copper board. These are way better and more durable than normal/cheap ones.

The price varies from time to time.
Last I bought a 3' X2' fibre-glass board @ Rs. 900+ from a man who manufactures PCB locally. But that was possible because of a personal source else he doesn't sell the board.

Earlier I used to buy the boards from some reputed shops which sell all kind of industrial components. But naturally their rates are higher.

1. You can ask the board in the shops in your locality where they sell "industrial components". I am sure there are many shops in Hyderabad or in your specific locality.

2. And regarding PCB making: Just follow the method written below and you will get a professional result at home like I do in my Bedroom-lab.

a) Print the circuit with a laser printer using a good quality inkjet photo-paper. This is the most important part. This will give you a great result, I can assure you.

b) Clean the Copper clad board of the same size (after cutting it) with water and Scotch-Brite that is used to clean the cooking utensils. Wipe it off with a soft and very clean cloth and let it dry for a minute or two. Never ever touch the cleaned copper surface with your hand once its cleaned.

c) Get a small sized plywood plank where you can place the pcb firmly. The surface of the plank is rough, so you won't need any addition fixing material to prevent the PCB getting slipped while you use toner transfer method. Also the pre-heating of the board is NOT required.

d) Set the knob of the electric Iron to the maximum temperature position and wait till it reaches the maximum temperature. Now press the tip of the iron to slowly but firmly over the photopaper and start pressing the paper against the board.

When each and every impression is clearly visible on the overleaf ( the white side of the photo paper where the circuit has not been printed) you can stop ironing. For a very tiny board like APEX GAINCLONE PCB, it might take some 4 to 5 mins.

e) Now slowly peel off the paper when the board is slightly hot. If it's a clean and excellent transfer, the photo-paper should come out easily.
If not, put the board into some cold water and wait for 30 minutes. Then use your thumb to rub and easily remove the excess paper.

f) Etch the board using your preferred method. I use Ferric Chloride solution (1:3) because I can re-use that.

g) When etching is done, remove the toner with Thinner solution and you will get the shiny copper tracks.

h) You can apply a solution to protect or weatherproof the copper tracks.
For this I use a little amount of resin diluted in thinner. It helps to solder the components too.

i) I print the component layer too using the method described earlier (except the etching part).

j) For the drilling part, I now use a high speed micro drill purchased locally.

Below is a link of an old video of mine that I uploaded earlier on this topic as my personal learning experience. But now, I neither use that transparent paper nor I pre-heat the board. I use only photo paper now and that saved me from many hassles.
You can get some help for the etching part and the size of the container, removing toners etc. in that video. I forgot to wear protective gloves etc. but you should definitely take care about your hands and eyes because it's a risky process. Follow the method with caution at your own risk.
Here is the link of my old video: DIY PCB: Home made Double Sided PCB-Home brewed dual layer PCB - YouTube

Thank you Som sir for your kind information. I ll try your process when i get those pcb clads. Thank you again.

You are welcome.

I am tempted to spontaneously advise something, considering the fact that you are a DIYAUDIO enthusiast from Indian Origin and having limited access to truly world class Speakers/drivers and limited resource ( like myself).

First of all, learn to scientifically build your speaker enclosures as per your listening environment.

If you have a pair properly built and well-tuned enclosures, almost any amplifier will sound great especially if you are a fan of music in compressed format. Even the locally available "2N3055+ quad opamp" based high quality discrete kits will sound great.

And take resort to bi-amping or tri-amping if you can, with 2 way or 3 way active cross-over network ( Active amplifiers) .

I had built a 2 way active X-over too following Rod Elliot's design earlier. And the sound of the system was something unprecedentedly charming for me.

Then I upgraded to a 3 way active crossover system which, in the opinion of all of my RL friends( one has a serious professional multimedia studio experience), is "superb", "amazing", "This is far better than my costly ..... or ....... brand home theatre" etc. And they visit me many times just to listen to my DIY audio system.

Well this is the magic of Active amplifier system. It's difficult to express the pristine sound quality unless you have not heard one yourself.

I just sincerely followed the advice of Sir Rod Elliot, posted on his website.

Trust me, you won't regret the decision.

Many great resources are available here and on the web too.

Last but not the least, use uncompressed format ( flac, wav, or audio CD etc.) for your audio system to realise its true potential.
Mp3 or other highly compressed format simply kills many additional finer details of the track. There is hardly any scope for improvement or reinforcement however much you may try with DSP or multi-band Equalisation once the music is compressed unless the recording is very old.